I am a truth seeker, just a curious man trying to make sense of a crazy world...

Thursday, 16 March 2017

Building On...

Building on somewhat from my last blog:

A friend sent me a true and interesting story about a man who at the age of 20 ‘left it all behind’ and became, for 27 years, a hermit in the woods of Maine. My response:

'Finally got a chance - actually, to be more honest about it, took the time - to look into this story.

'First of all, thanks for it. I enjoyed it. Yes, it 'interested' me. I came close to that sort of decision for myself, many years ago (and so this reading brought all that back). I was 27, and flirting with the idea of 'leaving it all behind,' as nothing about life interested me. it seemed so petty. Without purpose. (How could people live this way, without knowing what it was all about, what it was all for?? Just caught up in it, like flies in a web...) I even spent a weekend on spiritual retreat around that time at a small monastic setting in the then-barren hills of Orange County at a Vedanta monastery. Which spiritual philosophy, amidst all my reading on the general subject up to that point in time, appealed most to me. But something about the situation didn't feel quite right. And then - it couldn't have been long after that attempt to bring some sense into my life - that it hit me. I was on the bus going to work one morning (after 2 years as a c.o. over in Korea I was living in Hollywood at the time, trying to learn how to write film scripts; thinking that that was the way to 'get' to people, wake them up in a spiritual way, as I had been touched by various films in my life, to 'think beyond the box,' and in the meantime had taken a job as an 'assistant underwriter' - read: typist - at a life & fire insurance company. Of all things), when the thought occurred to me: Our human problem was money. Was the 'financial' setting that we had created for ourselves. Treating money as an end in itself, rather than merely a means to an end. The end of, simply - a key word, there: simply - exchange our goods and services with one another, for its sake. As the children - the 'offspring'; the divine sparks - of our Creator Source. Where our medium of exchange, and our preoccupation with it, was what was keeping us from letting Spirit flow, between us. Simple.

'So, what was I supposed to do with this insight? I could no longer live in the box that it - our emphasis on it - had constructed. That was an illusion. (I was yet to 'get' fully that life itself was an illusion.) I know, I thought. I will go and tell my finding to the president of the United States - as the answer "to all our aches and evils;" i.e., to do away with money* - and then go from there. Take up my life again from there. However that would be; however that would look. The details didn't matter, to me. (As the details of his decision didn't matter to The Maine Hermit.) I just knew that I had to do this. And then I would be free.

'As it turned out, I did go, on 'a walk to Washington;' and although I didn't get in to see JFK (they wouldn't let me. Fair enough. I left my message at the side gate of the White House, with the S.S. guy who had been called in to deal with me), I had done what I needed to do. Now what, I thought. I didn't know. My life was an open book. What would I scribble into it then...

'Further on 'things turning out': For me, it entailed returning to California, and seeing what would turn up then, as I saw my 'sentence' in life out. And one thing has led inexorably to another; and here I am. And here we are. Facing the possibility - at last - of a world without money. At least as we have known it. For a better world to come into being in the wake of that decision.

'On my hitchhiking way back across the country, I got a short ride (somewhere in Ohio, as I recall) from a nice elderly man who inquired about what I was up to, and I told him a little about it, and he took it in, and, not particularly judgmental, more simply pleasant enough as an observation, said (words to the effect), 'So I suppose you hope that people will respond immediately to your suggestion?' And I found myself replying, thoughtfully, "No. It's a matter of education. That takes time. I figure that it will take about...thirty years."

'That was nearly 56 years ago, now.

'Close enough.'

(signed)

—

'You' do understand that ‘wealth’ as we commonly understand it is just a concept, don’t you? A mental construct?? Interest-bearing money is not a law of physics. Yes, if you have 6 cows and your neighbor has only two, you have more cows than he does, and you have more milk to ‘sell’ than he does, and so you are ‘wealthier’ than he is, in that sense of the word. But the neighbor may have concentrated his time and effort on raising chickens, and has them and their eggs to sell in exchange. Or can offer his labor in exchange.

Not to get bogged down here on the subject of barter, and the convenience of paper money. Just to say: You don’t need interest-bearing money - what has properly been called ‘money as debt’ - to operate your system of exchange of goods and services by. All you need is a motive to do so. We have operated for some time under the motive of ‘making a profit’. And that system works, to an extent. But it creates many distortions; as we have seen, and are experiencing. I have a better idea: that we share our goods and services with one another - and give of our best in the process - out of a higher motive than the one of ‘making a profit’. Out of the highest motive that there could ever be:

out of gratitude to our Creator for ilie with meaning.

Out of, in a word:

Love.

And when we do - not if, but when - ‘all else will be added unto us’. To say: We will live abundantly in a universe chockfull of Abundance. Having been supplied, out of it - out of its very essence - with all that we could ever need. Food. Drink. Material (matter-ial) to create things out of. Like care. Boats. Spaceships. ‘Build’-ings…

You get the idea.

It’s very simple, basically. Everything at its basic level is (light) energy, and it is built up into forms via DNA. ‘Crack the code’ and you have access to the item, and what can be built up from it. Just as a goatherder in Kenya can, in this current day and age, have access to the world’s information via a handheld device, so can we, ‘tomorrow,’ dial up a meal in a replicator (aka a materializer). Have convenient free-energy devices. Travel via teleportation. Etc. etc. and etc.

We just need to acknowledge our Creator Source.

And get money out of the way of our future.* Which, in ‘reality,’ exists

Now.

In sum.

All of the ‘wrinkles in time’ that our erstwhile masters would use to enslave us - like electronic credits and debts, in a moneyless system - are perfectly valid in their essence. In the right hands.

Pending.

As we speak.

Pending. On our raising our consciousness sufficiently to show that we can handle such a bright future, brightly.

And not let it descend further into the darkness.

Which, of course, is part of our potential as well.

In a realm of free will.

So:

Our -

Your -

choice.

—

* And the control that it gives some over the rest of us.

—-

P.S. And our metaphorical Kenyan goatherder may well lead us into that brighter future. My friend has just sent me this follow-up on our exchanges:

“In reference to your comments about money, a few years ago there was an inspiring program on 60 Minutes about Kenya and their almost cashless society...It was just amazing to see how this worked with their little mobile devices,

“The banks were totally resistant to this idea and pleaded with the government not to let it happen, but the government gave the go ahead. Such a simple system....read the article...it is awesome.”

[the blurb with the video:]

‘At least in the realm of cashless marketplaces, the east African country has been thundering along the cutting edge since the 2007 launch of M-Pesa—the M is for "mobile"; pesa is Swahili for "money."

‘What was originally conceived as an efficient method to make payments on microloans has been rapidly adopted by Kenyans as a way to send money from urban centers back to rural hometowns.’

Good reading material

About Me

I am an 82-year old kid, with enthusiasms for a number of subject areas in particular. Among them: Complementary/alternative medicine; autism etc (a big subject area, that one); 9/11 etc (ditto); the differences between 'spiritual' and 'religious'; and the theme running through it all: a passion for truth seeking. That basically is what I mean by the 'kid' reference. I often feel like the little boy in the marvelling crowd who blurted aloud, of the emperor, that he was, er, naked.